Keyword: phone

My phones are ringing off the hooks with robocalls from smug politicians telling me that it's going to snow tomorrow. (I listened to the first ten seconds of the first call.) So far my town and my county, judging by the caller-ids, have called. (Their system isn't sophisticated enough to recognize that they are calling duplicate addresses so I get two of each of these annoying calls.) How stupid do these people think we are? What do they think we all did before they had their "emergency phone system"? ML/NJ

Is your handset doing its best? Alvaro Reyes via Unsplash _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ After a year or two, your trusty smartphone may not race along at the same speed it used to. You might feel like it has slowed down a little, but before you go in for an upgrade, you should be more scientific about your hunch. To know for sure whether there's a drop-off, here's how to run some benchmarks and speed tests on your phone—and boost its performance if it falls short. Benchmark basics On personal computers, benchmarking has been around for years. Benchmarks are tests that measure the...

Commentary: In a video posted online, a customer reportedly wants to check if a new battery is authentic -- using his teeth. Cue explosion.Some things might seem obvious. But even these things are worth mentioning occasionally. Please, therefore, allow me to say these words: Don't bite your phone battery. I base this apparently absurd entreaty on a video that's making its way around the web. It appears to show someone in a Chinese electronics store. As the Taiwan News reports, the customer was looking for a replacement battery for his phone last Friday. The news outlet insists that the action...

Upset that Apple has been slowing down older iPhones to prevent battery degradation? The company will let you disable this sort of throttling with an upcoming iOS update. But that doesn't mean you should. In an interview published last night (Jan. 17) by ABC News, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that a developer beta of iOS coming next month will provide users with more information on their states of their battery — and will ultimately throttle CPU performance if things are going awry. It will be released to the public soon after. The feature has caught the ire of those...

For the first time, the nation's largest wireless provider is losing customers faster than it can replace them. It's a major milestone for Verizon, which on Thursday reported a net decline of 289,000 cellphone subscribers over the past four months. Even though Verizon usually loses some cellular customers every quarter, it has historically lured enough back to be able to report growth in that part of its business. But recent months have seen hundreds of thousands of customers defect to competitors such as T-Mobile and Sprint, analysts say. Things could have been even worse if Verizon hadn't suddenly reintroduced unlimited...

AT&T wireless customers throughout large parts of the country and in the state of Florida are unable to call 911 due to a technical problem. The cause of the problem is unknown but officials both locally and throughout the southeast are working to fix the issue with AT&T, which is one of the largest wireless carriers in the nation. Currently, AT&T says the problem is affecting customers in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee, according to the Orange County officials. Each county has set up backup phone numbers so residents can reach first responders. In Orange County, residents needing...

After reading this article you might not ever view your electronic devices the same way again.Â Last year, Hollywood released a biographical political thriller based on the life of Edward Snowden that had one particularly creepy scene.Â In that scene, a government spook used a program to remotely activate the microphone and camera on a laptop, and by doing so he was able to watch a woman as she got undressed.Â Sadly, as you will see below, this kind of thing is happening constantly.Â Any digital device can potentially be accessed and used to spy on you even if it...

A few months ago I wrote about how you can encrypt your entire life in less than an hour. Well, all the security in the world can’t save you if someone has physical possession of your phone or laptop, and can intimidate you into giving up your password. And a few weeks ago, that’s precisely what happened to a US citizen returning home from abroad. On January 30th, Sidd Bikkannavar, a US-born scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flew back to Houston, Texas from Santiago, Chile. On his way through the airport, Customs and Border Patrol agents pulled him aside....

Top White House aide and policy adviser, Stephen Miller, sidestepped repeated chances during Sunday news shows to publicly defend embattled National Security Adviser Michael Flynn following reports that he engaged in conversations with Russian diplomat(s) about U.S. sanctions before Trump’s inauguration. The uncertainty came as Trump was dealing with North Korea’s apparent first missile launch of the year and his presidency, along with visits this week from the leaders of Israel and Canada. Pressed repeatedly, Stephen Miller said it wasn’t up to him to say whether the president retains confidence in Flynn. “It’s not for me to tell you what’s...

The manufactured threat of fake news and the constant changes to Facebook and Twitter algorithms has, as I predicted, forced the free markets to fight back. A new app has blazed onto the scene with the ability to restore your ability to post without fear of reprisal from reckless algorithms dictating what you should see and share. It is Called the Candid App and they asked me to to give it a look. So I did… and I have to tell you I am hooked. VIDEO

Are Apple products not to be transferred? My step daughter gave me her old Iphone. I had no problem getting service for it. I was told Apple does in store classes/tutorials on the product. When I inquired about them I was asked about my Apple code or ID and other like information. This made me wonder if I wold be denied assistance with this product as it was originally registered in her name? Cannon was like this on a printer I could not prove ownership on (who retains purchase info from years ago?). Thanks

EMAILID 50228 John Podesta losing his personal device a second time. Previously he lost one in a cab, now he lost a Blackberry in a rental car. So what we know is he lost two devices (with possible passwords, emails). A previous email showed how he hacked himself by clicking a fake link on advice from aides. Podesta never even needed the 400 lb hacker to get to the emails. He gave out his own data through his own actions several times to all sorts of different people from cabbies to originators of random bait links. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/50228#efmAD3AFo

The Department of Justice on Thursday charged 61 people for their role in a call center scam.Federal prosecutors charged 61 individuals and entities across the world Thursday in connection to a transnational call center operation that investigators say scammed United States residents out of millions. The arrests follow a three-year joint investigation between the Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), and the US Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration. NBC Bay Area first reported on these scams where a caller posing as a federal agent threatens the person on the other line with arrests, lawsuits or worse, if they...

The technology, which is described on MIT's website and will be presented in full at a wearables symposium next month, is called DuoSkin. The researchers say you can design a circuit using any graphic software, stamp out the tattoo in gold leaf (which is conductive to electricity), and then apply other commodity materials and components that would make the tattoo interactive.

The full disk encryption used to safeguard information stored on Google Android devices can be broken, an independent researcher has found. Gal Beniamini spent several years analysing the TrustZone platform found on Qualcomm chipsets, and utilised previously gained knowledge to run code that is able to extract the encryption keys used to scramble stored data on Android devices. The researcher discovered that encryption keys derived from the TrustZone feature could be extracted by software and cracked by brute force outside the Android devices, thus bypassing security mechanisms that limit the number of password guesses that can be made.

One of the things here I've noticed is that there's a debate going on about this topic. Donald Trump is right and I've said it, but come under fire. See the tweet below: Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Calâ€” Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016 It would be one thing to talk about doing this to people who are alive. But the Radical Islamic Terrorists who carried out San Bernadino are dead. I don't care about their civil liberties. Keep America safe, which will...

Florida Sheriff Grady Judd is urging residents in his county to arm up, stressing that it is "more important to have a gun in your hand than a cop on the phone." Judd is Sheriff of Polk County. According to Fox News, "Judd believes guns allow citizens to defend themselves when police cannot." Moreover, he wants criminals to know that citizens in his county will defend themselves. Following an incident where a home invasion suspect was shot earlier this month, Judd said, "If you are foolish enough to break into someone's home, you can expect to be shot in Polk...